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US shutdown: Lawmakers to launch bid to end impasse

The government partially shut down after Congress blew through a deadline to pass a short-term spending bill to keep it funded.

US President Donald Trump at the White House Rose Garden on January 19, 2018.(Reuters)

The US Senate could
meet at 1 am on Monday or sooner to find a compromise and hammer out an
agreement to end the federal government shutdown that entered its second day on
Sunday.

The government
partially shut down after Congress blew through a deadline to pass a short-term
spending bill to keep it funded. Democrats wanted any funding bill to be linked
to protections to Dreamers — undocumented immigrants brought to the US as
children, who are in danger of deportation.

A day later, US
President Donald Trump and the Republican Party blamed the Democrats for the
impasse.

“Great to see how hard
Republicans are fighting for our Military and Safety at the Border. The Dems
just want illegal immigrants to pour into our nation unchecked. If stalemate
continues, Republicans should go to 51% (Nuclear Option) and vote on real, long
term budget, no C.R.’s!” Trump tweeted on Sunday, referring to a rarely used
parliamentary procedure to overcome the 60% support needed to clear spending
bills, and to continuing resolutions, which are temporary allocation of funds.

This is not the first
time that Trump has suggested the “nuclear option”, though the Senate
Republican leadership has so far been unwilling to use it.

“(Charles Schumer)
wants to keep the government shut down until we finish a negotiation on the
subject of illegal immigration,” Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said of
the House’s top Democrat. “If they continue to object, we cannot proceed to a
cloture vote until 1 am Monday. But I assure you, we will have the vote at 1 am
Monday, unless there is a desire to have it sooner.”

Meanwhile, crowds
estimated to number in the hundreds of thousands took to the streets of major
cities to march against Trump and his policies. Protestors hoisted placards
with messages including “Fight like a girl” and “A woman’s place is in the
White House” and “Elect a clown, expect a circus”.

Trump and the
Republicans argue that by blocking the spending bill, Democrats are siding with
illegal immigrants and causing hardship to federal employees, including
military personnel, and are denying insurance to children and the poor under a
government programme.

The Democrats, on the
other hand, have accused Trump of reneging on a deal made with him on Friday,
at which their party conceded funding for his vaunted wall along the Mexican
border for protection to Dreamers.

Moderates from both
parties are reported to be working on a compromise deal that will keep the
government funded for three weeks and implicitly guarantee a votes on a series
of immigration measures lined up.

Key to the
negotiations is Trump, whose shifting positions on immigration issues has
confounded both his own party and Democrats. He is understood to have gone back
on his deal with Schumer under pressure from immigration hardliners in the
White House.

But he is staying in
Washington, cancelling celebrations of the first anniversary of his administration
which he had planned in Mar-a-Lago. Instead, the White House released pictures
of him at work on Saturday. He also tweeted: “This is the One Year Anniversary
of my Presidency and the Democrats wanted to give me a nice present. #Democrat Shutdown.”

SAINT PETERSBURG: A
homemade bomb blast at a supermarket in the Russian city of Saint Petersburg injured 10 people Wednesday, officials said, sparking a
probe into attempted murder.

"According to preliminary information, an explosion of
an unidentified object occurred in a store," a spokeswoman for Russia's Investigative
Committee, Svetlana Petrenko, said in a statement.

The blast was caused by a "homemade explosive device
with the power equivalent to 200 grammes of TNT filled with lethal
fragments," she said.

"The investigation is looking at all possible causes of
what happened," she said, adding that a probe for attempted murder had
been launched.

The incident comes several months after Russia's second city
was rocked with a metro bombing in April which killed 16 people and amid
concern that hundreds of Russian citizens who travelled to fight alongside
jihadists groups abroad could pose a mounting security challenge back home.

Rattled by a one-two
punch of betrayal and scandal, Donald Trump on Thursday tried to block the
publication of a bare-knuckle book that portrays his White House as a fetid
stew of backbiting, incompetence and dysfunction. The publishers
responded by moving the release date up by four days to Friday. Trump instructed his
lawyers to prevent the release of “Fire and Fury: Inside
the Trump White House” -- an expose by author and political muckraker Michael
Wolff -- which quotes key Trump aides expressing serious doubt
about his fitness for office. The book -- which
paints Trump as mentally unstable and far out of his depth -- quotes at length
his former ally and chief strategist Steve Bannon, who also received a “cease and
desist” order from Trump’s attorneys. “Your publication of
the false/baseless statements about Mr. Trump gives rise to, among other
claims, defamation by libel, defamation by libel per se, false light invasion
of privacy, tortious interference with contractual relations, an…